How many cups is a stick of butter?
One US stick of butter is ½ cup — 8 tablespoons, 4 ounces or 113 grams. Two sticks make 1 cup (227 g), and a 1-pound box holds 4 sticks (454 g).
Sticks of butter to cups, tablespoons and grams
| Butter | Cups | Tbsp | Ounces | Grams |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ½ stick | ¼ | 4 | 2 oz | 57 g |
| 1 stick | ½ | 8 | 4 oz | 113 g |
| 2 sticks | 1 | 16 | 8 oz | 227 g |
| 3 sticks | 1½ | 24 | 12 oz | 340 g |
| 4 sticks (1 lb) | 2 | 32 | 16 oz | 454 g |
Cups of butter to sticks and tablespoons
| Recipe says | Sticks | Tablespoons | Grams |
|---|---|---|---|
| ¼ cup butter | ½ | 4 tbsp | 57 g |
| ⅓ cup butter | ⅔ | 5 tbsp + 1 tsp | 76 g |
| ½ cup butter | 1 | 8 tbsp | 113 g |
| ¾ cup butter | 1½ | 12 tbsp | 170 g |
| 1 cup butter | 2 | 16 tbsp | 227 g |
| 250 g block (UK/EU) | ≈ 2.2 | ≈ 17⅝ | 250 g (≈ 1.1 cups) |
How to Convert Butter Between Sticks, Cups and Grams
Butter is the one ingredient where American and metric recipes diverge the most. US recipes call for sticks, cups, and tablespoons; the rest of the world weighs butter in grams. This butter converter bridges both directions exactly, because — unlike flour or sugar — a stick or cup of butter is a fixed weight by convention, so there's no guesswork.
The anchor is the US stick: one stick is a quarter-pound, which is 4 ounces, 113 grams, 8 tablespoons, or half a cup. Double it for a cup (2 sticks, 227 grams), and divide for the smaller units — a tablespoon of butter is about 14.2 grams. Because these are conventions rather than densities, the numbers are precise: the converter weighs everything against the ounce, then expresses it in whatever unit you need.
Measuring butter without a scale
If you only have a metric recipe and US stick butter, the wrapper is your ruler: each stick is divided into 8 tablespoon segments, so 100 grams is about 7 tablespoons — cut at the seventh mark and you're within a gram or two. Soft or melted butter is best measured by weight; a kitchen scale removes the packing and melting errors that volume measurements invite.
Salted and unsalted butter come in the same sticks, so every conversion above works for either — the choice only changes seasoning, not the math. If your recipe calls for European-style butter sold in 250-gram blocks, convert by grams rather than sticks, since those blocks aren't portioned into tablespoons. For every other ingredient — flour, sugar, cocoa, dairy — the cups to grams converter covers the same volume-to-weight math with per-ingredient densities, and if you're out of unsalted butter, the unsalted butter substitute page gives the salt adjustment.